William P. Banks’s scientific contributions

Tested a 2-stage model for a "semantic congruity effect" in comparative judgments in 2 experiments with 26 undergraduates as Ss. When Ss were asked to choose the higher or the lower of 2 balloons tethered at the ends of strings, they were faster at choosing the higher of the 2, but when asked to choose the higher or the lower of 2 yo-yos hanging at the ends of strings, they were faster at choosing the lower one. By hypothesis, this occurred because the balloons were coded at a 1st perceptual stage in term of highness and the yo-yos in terms of lowness; then, at the 2nd linguistic stage, the perceptual codes that matched the instructional codes ("choose the higher" or "the lower") resulted in the faster judgments. Results demonstrate that (a) the 2 stages are sequential, since changes in pairwise stimulus discriminability and in instructions had additive effects on the total reaction time and (b) the presence of the semantic congruity effect depended on the actual perceptual codes applied to the stimuli.

Tested a 2-stage model for a "semantic congruity effect" in comparative judgments in 2 experiments with 26 undergraduates as Ss. When Ss were asked to choose the higher or the lower of 2 balloons tethered at the ends of strings, they were faster at choosing the higher of the 2, but when asked to choose the higher or the lower of 2 yo-yos hanging at the ends of strings, they were faster at choosing the lower one. By hypothesis, this occurred because the balloons were coded at a 1st perceptual stage in term of highness and the yo-yos in terms of lowness; then, at the 2nd linguistic stage, the perceptual codes that matched the instructional codes ("choose the higher" or "the lower") resulted in the faster judgments. Results demonstrate that (a) the 2 stages are sequential, since changes in pairwise stimulus discriminability and in instructions had additive effects on the total reaction time and (b) the presence of the semantic congruity effect depended on the actual perceptual codes applied to the stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).